The BHF Story
Every BHF stores bears the name of its founder, Bienvenido Bondoc Balingit,
whose innate talent in furniture craft and acumen in business, where the seeds
that allowed BHF to grow into the progressive and multi-faceted family
corporation that was today.
It was in the 1950s when Bienvenido, a craftsman who was trained in making
religious relics, opened a workshop-cum-display store at Grace Park, Caloocan
City, then, one of Manila's foremost furniture business districts. The shop was
named Balingit Art Enterprises and daily churned out plaster icons and
handcrafted furniture for dealers and direct buyers.
This was the line of business that had been etched early in the mind of
Bienvenido's daughter Aurora who finished a degree in Business Administration at
the Far Eastern University in Manila in 1959.
Shortly before graduation, Aurora married FEU law student Remigio Manabat
Bonifacio, and in 1964, the couple started their own furniture dealership
verture, RMB Enterprises, also at Grace Park.
With business competitors getting tighter in Manila, the couple decided to
try their luck in Dagupan City where, in 1964, Bievenido had already expanded
his business by opening a branch at the old Crisologo building under the
management of his brother.
Dagupan branch was technically the first BHF store. Struggling at the
outset, the store was sold to Bonifacio couple in 1965 and in no time at all was
turned around into highly successful enterprises that served the needs of
clients north on Manila.
Maintaining only a lean staff at the start, Remigio himself delivered and
pick up the goods while Aurora basically minded the store and kept the books.
As the family grew, to include seven children, so did the business.
By 1970, BHF was already into furniture of beds with the trade mark "Daisy",
named after the couple's eldest daughter. Both activities have since given way
to more cost-effective dealership by consignment or direct purchase from
furniture manufacturers. In 1977, BHF started selling appliances, offering
reasonable installment terms to its clients.
Shortly before the EDSA Revolution, the growing political unrest in the
country had greatly devalued the peso. Clients became less regular in paying
their installments and sales of furniture and appliances, as with most goods at
that time, went down. Taking her cue from these, Aurora decided to diversify
into the pawnshop business in 1983.
From thereon, there was no stopping the company's steady expansion into the
family corporation that is now also into jewelry and watches sales, rural
banking and the whole gamut of the retail trade.
For the new millennium, a computer shop was established, and mall known as
the BHF Family Plaza, both in Dagupan City.
Today, BHF Corporation consist of seventeen (17) Appliance and Furniture
stores, twenty nine (29) Pawnshop and Jewelry stores, one (1) Facial Plus, one
(1) Computer Shop, two (2) Banks and one (1) Supermarket and Department store in
key cities of North Luzon particularly in Tarlac, Pangasinan, La Union and
Ilocos Sur and provides jobs to more or less six hundred (600) employees.
Remigio continues to sit as vice-chairman of the Board while Aurora is still
directly and actively involved in the daily business transactions.
Bienvenido Balingit would be delighted to know that what he started over 50
years ago has now become a household name - BHF - which also stands for one "Big
Happy Family".
